July 11, 2006

The day the university announced its decision to permit Kevin Barrett to teach the one course he was hired to teach, he appeared on "Hannity and Colmes," introduced by Alan Colmes as "University of Wisconsin professor Kevin Barrett." If those words had come out of Sean Hannity's mouth, it would have provided a good occasion to accuse Hannity of being slanted and out to paint UW as a bunch of radical crazies. But it came from Colmes, the show's liberal, so it's just a nice demonstration of how lots of folks don't notice the distinction between professors and lecturers, even part time lecturers like Barrett. He's teaching here. He's one of the professors as far as the general public is concerned.

Let's go to the videotape:

Colmes begins and tries to present Barrett in a fairly positive light by bringing out the facts that the course is not required, that the 9/11 conspiracy theory will take up "only about one week" of the course, that the students will not be required to "regurgitate" his theory, and that he means to inspire "critical thinking." (Smarter students, I note, may want to regurgitate.)

From the moment he begins speaking, Barrett twitches and jerks around quite oddly and speaks in a breathless, excited way. He tries to unload a torrent of words about the theory and won't stop to give Colmes a chance to get through his series of questions, which are quite clearly designed to put Barrett in a positive light. Barrett, however, is so keen on his theory, he'd rather spout conspiracy. He looks nutty even before Hannity starts the questions that are meant to trash him. That is, Barrett's a witness who mucks up the direct examination. It doesn't take cross-examination to bring out the problems.

When Hannity takes over, Barrett interrupts him in the middle of his first question. When Hannity insists on finishing the question, Barrett smugly goes "Yeah, yeah, finish up." On Hannity's show! As if he thinks the only people who are watching are folks who think Hannity's a jackass. Hannity asks him if he really believes 9/11 and other terrorists attacks were "an inside job." Barrett, inspiring no confidence that he will allow students to debate with him, says sharply, "I don't believe, I do know that 9/11 was an inside job." Barrett then tries to lay out the details of the theory. The word "thermate" comes out of his mouth. (It's supposed to be "thermite," but why be precise?) [ADDED: Apparently, there is something called "thermate," which, like thermite, has a role in the conspiracy theory.]

Hannity breaks in to say, "All right, so you believe that the buildings came down in a controlled demolition." Again, Barrett excludes the possibility of alternate theories: "Well, I don't believe it. I've looked at the evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming." Hannity's response is perfect: "All right, the evidence is overwhelming to you because you're a conspiracy nut." Hannity tries to set up his next question: "But putting that all aside..." That's perhaps the funniest line of the night, but it's stepped all over by Barrett, who motormouths conspiracy theory. Hannity goes ahead and asks his question with Barrett yammering over him. Hannity finally just lets the man babble. Then, he mutters, "Okay, I wish I had the 'Twilight Zone' music."

Hannity says, "Okay, here's my next question," and Barrett breaks in with a laugh and says "Okay, friend," and shrugs, looking quite pleased with himself, as if he believes he's getting the better of the exchange. As Hannity tries to ask the question, Barrett keeps interrupting, offering survey statistics that he seems to think show that people agree with him -- 60%! "You're in the minority," he tells Hannity. That is, we see Barrett garbling facts in real time, on camera.

Finally, Hannity gets Barrett to hear the question: Should extremists like you be allowed to teach? Barrett says: "No, you're the extremist. Fox News is the biggest bunch of extremists on the planet." He's got a huge laughing grin now. Hannity doesn't think Barrett should be teaching, and Barrett responds that he doesn't think Hannity should be on the air. "I think you guys should be taken off the airwaves, because you are the guys who are..." A desperate Colmes breaks in: "All right, we don't want to silence anybody...."

Colmes's attempt at the beginning to present Barrett in a good light by emphasizing that Barrett will bring debate and critical thinking to the classroom is all shot to hell. We've seen Barrett in action. Barrett retained his position here because we care about free speech values, but he slammed us in the face with his disrespect for free speech.

Barrett retained his position here because we care about free speech values, but he slammed us in the face with his disrespect for free speech.

Well, given that he's already committed to slamming parents of students, and students themselves, in the gut with his "knowledge" this is no surprise.

I don't care much what teachers/instructors/professors say outside the classroom, but I do care what they say inside it. It seems to be that both Barrett and UW have confused the two and, in the case of the latter through its decision to retain Barrett, put its imprimatur on intertwining and tangling of the two.

What qualifies someone to lecture at a university? The most I could find on Barrett's background beyond the website is some vague information that he taught at universities in the SF bay area, Paris and a course at UW

I know it makes a difference to you. But it is a distinction without a difference. You teach and he is teaching there this semester. The focus should be on the rediculous "academic freedom" argument advanced. If he were advancing White Power or female servitude or any number of other nonsensical things would this loon be given a pulpit? Not a chance.So why again should not the University of Wisconsin be met with much derision?

ACLU "ACLU of Wisconsin Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said today, “The University’s task was to evaluate Dr. Barrett’s qualification and ability to teach his assigned course based on the course’s requirement’s, not the content of his speech. It has apparently followed that process and applied the proper standards.”

Seriouslyunserious, I would only ask that you have some sympathy for the position the Provost was in trying to decide whether to fire Barrett, making him into a First Amendment martyr, once he'd been hired. As I've said in other posts, that doesn't excuse the fact that conditions here are such that he was hired in the first place, and the real test of the university is whether it finds a way to avoid hiring mistakes like this in the future. Another test for the university will come when we see how it treats others in similar positions. What if we found someone hired to teach here was a white supremacist, planning to devote a week of his course to his theory? Would he be treated with as much respect as Barrett? What if we found someone hired to teach evolution was a young earth creationist planning to devote a week of his course to his theory? These people now must be treated the same. Pretty horrible. I hate to even type that out. But this underscores why the hiring phase matters so much.

Barrett absolutely schooled Hannity in this interview. At one point, Hannity attempts to ask what evidence, and then Barrett responded calmly with all kinds of specifics including citing Stephen Jones' and Morgan Reynolds' work. All Hannity could do was state how Barrett was a nut - an a priori assumption on Hannity's part.

And Ann, thermate is a type of thermite to which barium nitrate and sulphur have been added. Stephen Jones has identified traces of thermate in structural steel samples from the WTC. Barrett was correct, but that was a nice attempt at a diversionary tactic.

And this is exactly why there is so much dis-respect for academics in general. A true profession polices its own ranks in its own interests. Why then do the UW professors not speak out against allowing this putz to teach?

No wonder people bitch about tuition... especially if it's paying a salary to this guy. I think the moon landing was faked..Can I teach at UW? I know who the gunman on the grassy knoll was...Can I teach at UW? I know the Jews control the media... Can I teach at UW? I think the holocaust was faked.... Can I teach at UW?

Ann, you make an excellent point -- those who are hiring the people should be the ones sweating here (and being ridiculed), not the provost. I wonder why no one has asked them why they hired such a loon -- all I've seen are vague statements that Barrett was qualified. You have to wonder how hard they looked at his qualifications and mind-set. Was there actually a serious interview, or was it conducted over beer at the Terrace?

The world is prey to invisible flying rabbits. One of them has bitten Barret the Lecturer behind the left ear, which has turned his brain to mush, so that by a process of Pharaonic mummification he lies supine in his conspiracist's sarcophagus while Sea Lilies of the Nile wash over him.

This is what UW serves up to students mulcted for $40,000 per annum on the assurance that "education" comes only at a price? Guaranteed, there are no conspiracists teaching Bill Clinton touring East Europe on a Soviet KGB passport, ratting out Iron Curtain dissidents during that year's Prague Spring. However can this be? Perhaps even in advance of Kerry's love affair with Ho Chi Minh, such treachery strikes a bit too close to home?

In 2004 or thereabouts, Popular Mechanics magazine published an extensive engineering/technical analysis of every 9/11 factor bruited by dolts such as Barrett, both before and since. Is Colmes naively trying to mute the impact of this guy, saying "conspiracists aren't all bad," or is he setting up this pathetic fool so Hannity can get a laugh? In any case, why waste our time at all?

UW actually hired this ranting imbecile? If I were an alumnus, I would league together with others in protest, if only to preserve my own tattered reputation.

Ann, Thermate is supposedly a sulfer enhanced version of thermite that Steve Jones, a physicist from BYU, is claiming was used to destroy the WTC. It is normally an military incidiary or a welding device, but with them it becomes a curious material, which tends to have whatever properties they want to at the time. One of the problems with these "scholars" going on TV, is that their plots tend to be quite complicated, and keeping up with them is essentially a full time job.

How does a guy like this even get past the job interview? The only answer seems to be that someone in the UW administration believes this, or something like it. So, the real problem is not Barrett, who is at least a visible and identifiable loon. The problem is the loose screw you can't see.

I have a question for those people who believe that the WTC was brought down in a controlled explosion.

It was obvious that the tower started collapsing from the top. Are you saying that the intense flames would not have melted the wiring of the demolitions? If it started at the top, then the wires on the floors where the plane hit would have been incinerated.

Also, was there Thermate or Thermite on the floors the plane hit? If there were enough explosives to bring the building down would not the explosions caused by this thermite made the tower come down the second the plane hit?

Or did the people who supposedly planted the explosives, knew exactly where the planes would hit the towers? I mean were the pilots accurate enough to not only hit the buildings but hit them in the exact spots needed to not cause a preliminary explosion?

Because lets be honest, no explosive in the world would let 10000 degree temperatures not cause them to explode.

It's one of them. The other main two are the presence of pools of molten structural steel in the basements of all three buildings that collapsed that day (including WTC-7). Hydrocarbon fires like the fires in the towers don't melt steel like that. The other big one is the fact that the towers collapsed at virtual freefall speed, which indicates they encountered no resistance on the way down. The indicates the superstructure of all three buildings was completely compromised at the timeof collapse. The "pancake theory" cannot account for this.

It needs to be restated:The left is having their turning point, like the GOP of the 1950s. The GOP had to decide whether to go with the John Birch Society and implode on communist conspiracies, or create some new ideas and an operating plan for electoral victory.

The Left now has to deal with their own smug conspiracy nuts, who claim to see Bush's face on every tortilla. Which direction does it turn? So far, I can see lots of readying for spending decades wandering in the desert, muttering to themselves about the Evil Bushco and how terrible Amerika has become and why won't we just elect them and make it all right again?

"In April 2006, BYU removed those statements from their website following a letter saying that Jones' paper was, indeed, peer reviewed. The letter, written by linguistics professor Richard McGinn to Alan Parkinson, Dean of the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology, also says that McGinn is entitled to file an ethics complaint with the American Society of Civil Engineers against Parkinson for continuing to run those statements."

In Jones' paper he states the following:

"I presented my objections to the “official” theory at a seminar at BYU on September 22, 2005, to about sixty people. I also showed evidence and scientific arguments for the controlled demolition theory. In attendance were faculty from Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Psychology, Geology, and Mathematics – and perhaps other departments as I did not recognize all of the people present. A local university and college were represented (BYU and Utah Valley State College).

The discussion was vigorous and lasted nearly two hours. It ended only when a university class needed the room. After presenting the material summarized here, including actually looking at and discussing the collapses of WTC 7 and the Towers, only one attendee disagreed (by hand-vote) that further investigation of the WTC collapses was called for. The next day, the dissenting professor said he had further thought about it and now agreed that more investigation was needed. He joined the others in hoping that the 6,899 photographs and 6,977 segments of video footage held by NIST plus others held by the FBI would be released for independent scrutiny; photos largely from private photographers (NIST, 2005, p. 81). Therefore, I along with others call for the release of these data to a cross-disciplinary, preferably international team of scientists and engineers."

In a very important way, it's more damning to the University of Wisconsin that he is a lecturer and not a professor. A professor would have tenure and the university would have its hands tied. Look at all the difficulty Colorado has endured with Ward Churchill. But a lecturer could be fired with a keystroke, and UW has decided to keep him on to spout this bilge. Only one week of this one particular kooky conspiracy theory? First that's too long and secondly, what reason is there to believe that the rest of the class will be any better?

What do you mean "they couldn't fire him and make him a martyr"? So, it is better to waste public funds and let him promote this garbage? The Provost didn't fire him because at heart he doesn't really have a problem with what the guy is saying. Everything else he says is just boob bait for us uninitiated. Of course they hired this guy. The same people who did this at UW are the ones who recruited the spokesman for the Taliban at Yale because "Yale missed out on a great student like this to Harvard last year and we weren't going to miss out on one again". I guess we know where to find OBL.

The fact is Anne, that this is the culture in higher education these days. Higher education is a complete joke and an embarrassment to the country. UW deserves all of the approbation and ridicule it gets and then some.

How is it that the leaders of UW allowed such a corrosive and ignorant culture to develop that people in positions of authority would come to believe hiring this guy was a good idea? Because behind closed doors and in their most private moments the powers that be at UW don't think what the guy is saying is untrue much less beyond the pale. That is the conclusion I draw from this. If the people at UW don't like people drawing that conclusion, then take some responsibility and stop doing things like this.

Ann, I do not have sympathy for the Provost. As you said on WPR, I may not know the exact location of the line, but I do know when something is beyond the pale.

Ann said: Another test for the university will come when we see how it treats others in similar positions. What if we found someone hired to teach here was a white supremacist, planning to devote a week of his course to his theory? Would he be treated with as much respect as Barrett? What if we found someone hired to teach evolution was a young earth creationist planning to devote a week of his course to his theory?

I have no doubt about what would (and should) happen in these hypothetical case. Are you serious when you say you are in doubt?

MadisonMan: I am quite embarrassed for my University. I don't think I've ever felt this way before, but I do this morning.

The Christian anarchist said:"And Ann, thermate is a type of thermite to which barium nitrate and sulphur have been added. Stephen Jones has identified traces of thermate in structural steel samples from the WTC. Barrett was correct, but that was a nice attempt at a diversionary tactic."Since thermite is used in welding could the "traces" of thermite have been deposited in the construction of the steel beams during the building of the WTC? Since thermite welding is done under extremely high temperatures could the explosion of the aircraft have re-ignited the thermite or thermate?I think-but I'm not sure-that only one person, a BYU professor, has made the thermate claim. Steven Jones, the BYU professor, requested and received a sample of the WTC metal. Can one infer from one small sample the presence of thermate throughout the building?

I'm a parent of a high school senior and I have no doubt that he would realize that this guy was an idiot. I'm still afraid to send him to a large public university because I don't think he has enough experience yet to recognize the more subtle idiots that are teaching. I think he would get a much better education at his age in the army, and then go to university afterwards.

I wonder how many other parents think like this and what it will eventually do to college enrollment.

I am not a leftist. I'm much farther right than you are (at least economically). Why don't you address the perceived problems with the official instead of labeling everyone who disagrees with you as irrational? I can assure you, I am as rational as they come.

I guess the majority of people in this country are now loony leftists, as this poll indicates. Sometime in the future, I have no doubt you'll have a "leftist" moment where the truth starts to peek through.

Why doesn't the university set his class size at zero? Why doesn't the university insist that the instructor deliver his lecturers to empty classrooms? Why doesn't the university enforce its rights to the intellectual property produced by the instructor for the purposes of teaching this class, including course notes and any recordings of lectures?

All of those things are rights the university has that don't abridge his First Amendment rights. Yet somehow I doubt the university will enforce them. We may reasonably ask why not.

After all, you're not a First Amendment martyr if you're not fired and your class size is zero. That's not depriving the instructor of any rights he has. The right to free speech does not include the right to be heard. I'm sure the contract he signed is mute on the question of class size -- including zero.

Too many lawyers refuse to think outside the box for other remedies when faced with an aggressive ACLU.

The Christian Anarchist writes exactly like the Kennedy assassination conspiracists and and Fake Moon Landing nuts. They abuse the language of science, but reject all challenges (thinking they've defeated them).

They are invincibly ignorant, and should be paid no attention at all. It's a hideous disservice to taxpayers that this man should be cut one check while Wisconin's young men and women are off in Iraq doing the real work. Shame on the school system that has no apparent adults in charge.

Christian anarchist, I don't mean to rude, but, all those items have been rigorously examined and accounted for. Including the various oxide combinations forged in the heat. Please take a look at the Popular Mechanics article.

Then, from the strain-at-gnats-while-swallowing-elephants point of view, really, what manner of demonic government would do such a thing? Think of the first meeting, where someone had to propose it. Think of the ramifications if just one of the conspirators had a change of heart and went public--would anyone capable of such a thing, be willing to take the chance?

Theories like Barrett's are for the unexplainable--they're Dark Ages 'out there be dragons' stuff.

Remember that dropping the buildings was only the one thing needing doing--the conspirators also had to set up the entire chain of evidence embodied by the hijackers, the Berlin and Florida venues just for starters, and also somehow involve all the foreign governments that participated in backtracking the several years of the hijackers movements.

How many people are involved in this, would you say? And no leakers? Even as hated as Bush & co are?

Unless all is as it seems, with the jihadis, but the US gov't was in on it, and coordinated with it.

If this is true, why hasn't that same government, you know, silenced these Barrett types?

Don't send you children to UW or any other similar school. Send them to one of the military academies... it's one of the few last places you go to school and actually GET and education...particularly USMA. Getting in is tough....but well worth the effort.

More research (and samples) is needed to conclusively determine the origin of the thermate traces in the samples Jones' team has investigated. Interestingly, FEMA had most of the structural steel shipped overseas for scrap before thoroughly investigatng the cause of failure. I wonder why they did that...

Regardless, the two big question marks are the presence of molten steel in the basements of all three towers and the fact that they fell at freefall speed. Only controlled demolition explains those adequately.

Christian Anarchist, eh? I suppose believing that the World Trade Center collapsed because of Bush's sulphured krytonite charges isn't that big of a logical leap for someone who believes that a crucified man rose from the dead after a few days.

So how are things in Justin Raimondoland? Had any visits from any Israeli art students?

No doubt lecturer Barrett considers himself to be a fearless sifter and winnower. My pride in UW is diminished by this shameless ideolog.

Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.

The collapse of the WTC and "controlled implosion" have one thing in common - gravity. And that's it.

And where are these "pools of molten steel" that you're babbling about? Or are you just trying to divert attention from the inconvenient fact that steel does not have to actually melt to lose a substantial portion of its strength?

How were these explosives smuggled into the buildings?

For steel buildings, every support column on every floor must have 2 shaped-charges attached to it. How were these installed, given that the vast majority of the support columns were behind drywall and/or cinderblock?

How come no one heard the explosives being detonated?

How come none of the rescue personnel or people evacuating the buildings noticed detonation wires running all over the place, to connect all the charges?

How come there were no flashes of light or bursts of flame or puffs of smoke when the charges were detonated?

Johnk: Do you think the Provost actually believes this crap that is Barrett promoting? Give me a break, John. The provost is stuck with the guy because if he fired him, the guy would sue (with the ACLU's help no doubt), the university would end up spending tens of thousands defending the suit, with the provost and half the administration wasting day after day giving depositions.

If this doesn't fade away by the time classes are to begin, I would not be surprised to hear that they cancelled the class because of the detrimental effect the controversy was having on the campus environment or because of concerns for campus safety. That way, they avoid firing him for his weird ideas.

"He's teaching here. He's one of the professors as far as the general public is concerned."

Yup. To everyone outside the ivory tower, anybody who teaches at a college or university is a "professor." I even got called that word myself when I taught an introductory undergrad class as a grad student.

That said, I'm not sure why the distinction matters here. If anything, a full professor talking like that might reflect less badly on the university, given those pesky tenure rules.

If the top ten to twenty floors of a building such as the WTC towers start to move downward, due to the collapse of the support columns on 2-4 floors immediately below, why WOULDN'T they keep on moving at "free-fall" speed, C.A.?

Frankly I think an enterprising individual would ask Barrett if he'd like to have his 9/11 teaching course videotaped and then posted on the internet to reach the largest audience possible. Considering how fruity this guy is, I'm sure he'd jump at the chance.

IMHO the Provost should have fired him. The pain from that firing would be small potatoes compared to the ongoing and enduring agony of having this guy linked to your university.

It's hard to think of anything that drives good physicists up the wall than hearing "Physics proves it!" when that's just not true. ( We have a brand to protect, after all :) )

There are some real physics questions in Jones' papers, but (and this is one good thing about physics) they can be answered. There are also a few outright mistakes in important parts. As a former physics professor myself, I know of no credible colleagues who took the analysis seriously.

If Barrett were throwing this out there as something to discuss, and bringing in solid physicists to present the anti-case, then this might actually make a very interesting teaching case. (And, in that case I submit it would fall inarguably under academic freedom.)

As it's fairly clear that's not happening, it is rather an embarrasment.

I agree with our hostess that it does put the University administration in a tight spot. There is some (seriously flawed) "technical" support for the argument. It would be touchy to fire someone who had at least gone through the academic motions to gather evidence, weak though that evidence be.

But I'm a little curious: where's the department chair in all this? A professor would simply tell the chair to "go Cheney himself" (in just so many words), but a department chair has the power to lay down the law to a lecturer.

You can be sure that "lectureship budget cuts" will preclude his teaching any more courses in the future.

I've always wondered why there are so few teaching opportunities for me. I guess that I should start espousing bizarre conspiracy theories (but only the ones that the academic community likes because they expose BusHitler McChimpyHaliburton)--and then there might be a place for me!

One of these days, perhaps after a virus destroys all television sets, the masses are going to wake up and realize that they are not obligated to fund public universities.

Ann, I attended the University and its law school and feel a responsibility to donate to it. (And I like you a lot.) But this is stupid hire and the approval of his study plan are yet another reason I do not contribute to general alumni funds anymore. I won't shut my pocketbook completely, but I contribute only to special programs which receive funds directly.

It doesn't seem that the folks who oversee the admissions office(which refuses to provide me with the AA information I requested) or the hiring of nuts like this care, but I do.

Soemone earlier said that the problem with "responding" to arguments like the Christian Anarchist's is that they're so damn complex, and (I'd add) the holders of them tend to be some odd variation of intelligent, that it becomes a full time job.

That's exactly the problem. And I think it's exactly why this theory will continue to grow, and will be like a cancer on the Democratic Party especially.

I do have one specific question. Part of the overall theory is that no jet hit the Pentagon. Then what happened to the jet that supposedly did hit it, and all those people who were killed on it?

I think he would get a much better education at his age in the army, and then go to university afterwards.

Personally I didn't immediately go to college but rather went into the USMC for a 4 year tour for much the same reasons. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, was still a rather callow youth and I didn't want to waste my parent's money unnecessarily.

IMHO a tour of duty in the military is an extremely useful thing for some, for others it's a waste of time. I'd suggest the military if he has issues of self-confidence, motivation or if he's uncertain about his future. If he's got a definitely career planned out then perhaps going straight to college would work better.

But doing a tour in the military can give a young man a lot of self-confidence. Pretty much because you end up realising, after all the idiot nonsense the military subjects you to, that you can handle just about anything. You really learn where and what your personal limitations are.

Prior to joining the USMC I was a bit of a long-haired slacker. After that it all changed. The two things I learned from my time in the USMC was that I could survive anything and that I could make myself motivated to accomplish anything, no matter what. *shrug* and the college tuition benefits are certainly useful.

But the final decision has to be his. You can advise, but you cannot make him do it.

If nothing else a tour in the military will change his cleanliness habits. I used to be rather untidy but the USMC cured me of that. Mostly because you either get into the habit of keeping everything clean and neat, or you end up cleaning a lot more as punishment.

IMHO The United States Marine Corps is so nasty because we're all irritated at having to scrub the floors so much. :)

I still remember being ordered to strip a brand new floor, of no-wax tiles, of it's special coating so we could then wax it.

Perhaps conservatives should support Barrett in his effort to teach this course. Dick Cheney, who was a PHD candidate in political science at UW, formed many of his political views in response to actions of the left-wingers here in Madison. The probability Barrett convinces any students he is right is almost zero; the probability he gives motivation and drive to the next generation of conservative students is much more likely.

If the conspiracy enthusiasts want to abuse science and engineering, well, acetylene is also a hydrocarbon. [From Wikipedia: Acetylene (IUPAC name: ethyne) is the simplest alkyne hydrocarbon, consisting of two hydrogen atoms and two carbon atoms connected by a triple bond.] It burns very sooty and relatively cool without the introduction of oxygen. With oxygen it burns hot enough to melt steel. Give it even more oxygen and you cut right through the steel. That's the difference between a welding and cutting torch, the cutting torch has more oxygen jets to begin with, and a trigger for an additional blast of O2 to burn and blow away the melt.

Oxy-Acetylene welding is the standard form of gas welding and is still widely used, though arc welding and its MIG and TIG derivatives are now the state of the art.

If you give it the right amount of oxygen, almost any fuel will burn hot enough to weaken and possibly melt steel. Pre-industrial blacksmiths and cutlers used wood or coal and a big bellows. A normal skyscraper produces enough updraft by convection that some have proposed installing electicity generating windmills. With the large glass windows in the lobbies broken, the fires in the WTC towers were fed w/ a huge updraft of air.

This hire is an embarrassment, but a revealing one. The provost has only fueled the fire of public criticism by giving this kook a platform.

And I disagree that he would be a 1st Amendment martyr. As others have mentioned, he could have given him a syllabus and told him to teach it or decline the class. He's just a part-time lecturer, for crying out loud! Even U of Co didn't cave that easily. And there is no doubt that any right wing nut or even rational conservative would never be allowed to present their favorites theories. Newest class at our campus? "History of McCarthyism in the US." They've beaten Vietnam to death and are moving back in time for more evidence of Amerikkkan oppression.

Further, this class is not a graduate seminar or a debate between equals; it is an intro class made up of 18-year-olds. He should be imparting basic information, not challenging children to a forensic duel when their grades are at risk.

Uh, same reason why we don't know the name of that girl who was preparing for really hot date, and she wanted to get a really good tan, so she drove around the city to go to seven different tanning salons...

There's a certain abandoning of intellectual inhibitions with this stuff, isn't there? You've been raised all your life not to believe stuff that's patently crazy, but then one day you try a little, and the sky doesn't fall. So you try a little more, and the next thing you know you're doing the intellectual equivalent of running down the street naked with a lampshade on your head. Most people don't consider this as an option unless they're crazy, but you really can just let loose and believe absolutely anything.

Barrett's capacity for rational skepticism went where Deb Frisch's manners went. The id is all that's left.

I'm not sure why the UW is allowing this. My current UW (Washington) got rid of an anthropology graduate student who was teaching what basically amounted to pseudoscience paleoanthropology. Such as that Homo erectus had domesticated cheetahs (!) and was using them to hunt with. The decision to can him was basically driven by the department who, rightfully I think, is obliged to maintain some control over the content of their classes.

I have no desire to attempt to change anyone's mind about 9/11. My original argument with this article was that the video clip showed the opposite of what Ann claimed it did.

Still, I'll try and address a few of the points that have been raised. I'm clearly outnumbered and cannot address every single point.

First, the Popular Mechanics article is a puff piece. It doesn't address either of my points about freefall speed or molten steel. It's full of strawman arguments. Read the rebuttal.

Second, there's no reason for the government to "off" any of the dissenters. You all are doing a fine job yourselves.

Third, there are PLENTY of eyewitness accounts of people hearing explosions going off as well as seeing flashes indicating the same. These are listed in the articles I've already linked to. Go read them if you really are interested.

Fourth, even if the top twenty floors gave way, they still would have encountered resistance against the lower floors which would have slowed down the descent. Go here for a rigorous scientific analysis of this.

Fifth, yes there are plenty of eyewitness accounts of MOLTEN AND FLOWING steel in the basements of the three buildings even weeks after the collapse. Fires that didn't even break windows are not hot enough to MELT structural steel.

Sixth, if thermate was used, only remote controlled fuses would be necessary to start the demolition process. You wouldnt need miles of wires running all over the building. Also, if these wre planted on the top fifty floors, it would be relatively simple to pick the floor to detonate by remote control. No one would need to predict where the planes would hit. All this technology exists already. Someone just has to want to use it badly enough.

Andrew Foland says there are physics questions in Jones' paper that can be answered, then he fails to answer them or provide a counter-argument to Jones' claims. What are the questions he answers and how can you answer them? You claim to be a former physics professor. How did the towers fall at freefall speed?

I've provided lots of evididentiary support to my claims (physical, eyewitness, and circumstantial). You all simply hurl insults without attempting to address any points.

A final thought. The Romans had a question they used to cut through the fog of criminal investigations that we still use today. I'll ask it here concerning 9/11. Cui bono?

I can't get all that excited here. The guy is a lecturer. That is not tenured, and at a lot of schools, isn't even tenure track. The easiest thing for the University to do is to just not renew his contract. This happens all the time, for much more mundane reasons than this. Most schools don't even bother giving reasons - they typically have no obligation to, and so they just don't. And, from a legal point of view, not giving reasons is much preferable - there is nothing to really be sued over.

Now, if his contract is renewed, and he continues to teach, and, in particular, if he gets a tenure track position, then UW should be put on the spot.

To all who propose there were demolition charges on the main supports that brought down both towers, there's a huge problem with that hypothesis.

Both towers were "tube" structures or "monocoque". There were no internal implosion devices because there are no internals to implode! The entirety of the building in that design is held up by the outer superstructure, one layer deep, with cantilever floors spanning clean all the way across. Demo charges will then be on the outside, causing flash and material dispersal on detonation. That's simply not there in the videos.

WTC came down because the outer shell buckled from heat and the resulting inertia of that much steel coming down broke the cantilevered floors *first*, those being the weakest link in the system, directing the falling piles of debris between momentarily standing outer structure, before tension forces pull and "wrap" those inward on top. It was like rolling a sock down inside out.

I think these conspiracy nutcases should be sent to hang out with their beloved islamofascist murderer friends, so they can have their private parts cut off before they're beheaded. If it's good enough for our brave soldiers, it's certainly good enough for over-privileged academic hippie jerks.

Why, oh, why did Syd Barrett have to die today, and this schmuck jihadi Barrett is still with us?

Given that the Muslim terrorists had declared war on the United States several years earlier, and had tried to destroy the exact same building complex in early 1993, and had destroyed 2 US embassies in summer 1998, and had hit a US navy ship just 11 months earlier, why of course it all has to do with Dick Cheney's stock options, doesn't it?

Shill-king, for chrissakes, who has time to shake down all them apples? Is there any place on the net where the whole crime is laid-out, in some sort of coherent time-line, with the cast of conspirators pointed out?

Your post asks a lot of heavily-loaded questions--anyone could do the same in re to the event as the world believes it to've happened, AKA the story of 911.

Where's the link to the Firemen's black-box dispute? What war games and who ordered them? Who is gagging whoever is being gagged? Who said what about #7 and where's the context? Where is the Paki intelligence link?

And far as your 'put options', that has been extensively investigated, the records are public knowledge, and the market-makers questioned have concluded that the airlines's stock movements that Fall are normal, and inside the standard deviations. Google it for yourself, look at the friggin' stock charts, volume and price. The one spike slightly out-of-ordinary was some activity on the Aussie exchange, originating from China. But even that was standard deviation, just seen as coincidence rather than any nefarious activity.

The best thing to've bought before the event would've been gold--it would've pointed no finger, as airlines would, and it spiked dramatically after the event, as like events predictably spike gold. Gold investors always make money off calamity. Maybe every bad thing that happens is set off by gold-buyers.

I can't believe this fallacy is still out there. The main load-bearing structures for the WTC towers were 47 huge columns in the center of the buildings, not the peripheral supports of which you speak. David Ray Griffin addresses this point in his paper to which I've already linked. The excerpt:

Total Collapse: The official theory is even more decisively ruled out by the fact that the collapses were total: These 110-story buildings collapsed into piles of rubble only a few stories high. How was that possible? The core of each tower contained 47 massive steel box columns.[24] According to the pancake theory, the horizontal steel supports broke free from the vertical columns. But if that is what had happened, the 47 core columns would have still been standing. The 9/11 Commission came up with a bold solution to this problem. It simply denied the existence of the 47 core columns, saying: “The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped” (Kean and Hamilton, 2004, 541 note 1). Voila! With no 47 core columns, the main problem is removed.

The NIST Report handled this most difficult problem by claiming that when the floors collapsed, they pulled on the columns, causing the perimeter columns to become unstable. This instability then increased the gravity load on the core columns, which had been weakened by tremendously hot fires in the core, which, NIST claims, reached 1832°F, and this combination of factors somehow produced “global collapse” (NIST, 2005, pp. 28, 143).

This theory faces two problems. First, NIST’s claim about tremendously hot fires in the core is completely unsupported by evidence. As we saw earlier, its own studies found no evidence that any of the core columns had reached temperatures of even 482°F (250˚C), so its theory involves a purely speculative addition of over 1350°F.[25] Second, even if this sequence of events had occurred, NIST provides no explanation as to why it would have produced global—-that is, total--collapse. The NIST Report asserts that “column failure” occurred in the core as well as the perimeter columns. But this remains a bare assertion. There is no plausible explanation of why the columns would have broken or even buckled, so as to produce global collapse at virtually free-fall speed, even if they had reached such temperatures.[26]

Now tell us all about how WTC-7 collapsed when it wasn't hit by an airplane?

The core columns were designed to carry the gravity load; the monocoque was designed to take the wind load. The core wasn't, however, designed to take the gravity load plus the shock of one or more floors collapsing. There's video of the collapse of one of the towers that shows the core collapse lagging the collapse of the shell and floors substantially; this too is presented (ironically) as evidence for a controlled demolition.

Again, conspiracy is not evidenced simply by a bunch of questions you don't know the answer to. What do you do when you have questions unanswered? Do you first assume some far-reaching conspiracy, or do you first seek to answer them?

I think it needs repeating. The steel didn't need to melt. It just needed to lose its structural strength. On page 4 of the PM article:

CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

Dr. Strangegun is incorrect, the exterior was an important part of the support structure, but there were steel support columns inside the towers.

C.A. -

If you'd bother to read what happened in WTC7, you'd know that the building was constructed over an existing ConEd generator, on a structure called a "transfer truss", which is like a bridge. The building had tanks storing millions of tons of diesel fuel, both for the Con Ed generator as well as for backup generators for the Mayor's Emergency Command Post which was in that building.

Debris from the falling towers ignited WTC7, and eventually the diesel fuel was ignited. The heat from the fire eventually weakened the transfer truss and it collapsed, bringing down the building with it.

The temperatures generated by the fires in both the WTC7 and the towers were not hot enough to melt steel, only aluminum. However, it was enough to cause the steel to lose between 50% and 80% of its strength, and thus could no longer support the loads that it was designed to support.

I'm sorry if this isn't as "exciting" as your conspiracy theories, C.A.

As a follow-up to Christian Anarchist's cui bono comment:“The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”..."Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

Of all the dumb things "Truthers" believe, this has gotta be the dumbest. Why? Because it ignores the evidence of your own eyes.

Look at photos of the towers falling. You can clearly see that the debris around the buildings is falling faster than the buildings themselves, which means what, class? That's right, that the buildings are not falling at freefall speed.

WTC 7 CollapseCLAIM: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one."

FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.

The temperatures generated by the fires in both the WTC7 and the towers were not hot enough to melt steel, only aluminum. However, it was enough to cause the steel to lose between 50% and 80% of its strength, and thus could no longer support the loads that it was designed to support.

So why have there been only three steel-framed skyscrapers in history that collapsed as the result of fire and all of them occurred in NYC on 9/11? Pretty weird, huh?

And don't forget that esteemed UW Provost Patrick Farrell described Barrett's view as "unconventional" (implying there is some merit in the position) stating that it needs to be "sifted and winnow[ed]."

Where's the "sifting and winnowing" and who better than the UW Engineering Department is suited for this job?

Not a structural engineer, but I've been around the block enough to know bullshit when I see it. If you want to see some truly obvious bullshit, go check out "MIT Engineer" (who, mysteriously, has "patients") dishing it bigtime here.

Jeff King, on closer examination, has been a practicing physician for the last quarter century. So, odd.

Ann opined that it would be a huge burden on the poor soul from UW Engineering tasked with rebutting this. She is right. However, how about bringing in an engineer on one of the panels who looked at this? He/she would already have the necessary data and graphics to address these issues. Surely the UW could afford to bring in a speaker for one lecture.

Actually, it wasn't the kerosene that most likely caused the steel to lose strength, but everything else that the kerosene ignited.

It is somewhat like forest fires here in CO. The big Ponderosa pines have thick bark, and small fires don't affect them much. Five or ten years of burning needles aren't hot enough to set the big trees on fire. And, indeed, before we started managing our forests, small fires would come through every decade or two and burn out the needles and brush. But we started managing the forests, meaning in this case, putting out those small fires. The result, in many of our National Forests here is 100 years of dead needles and brush, and they can burn long enough to start the Ponderosa Pines on fire - and they burn hot enough to keep the fires going, and going, and going.

In this case, it appears that the kerosene started the furnishings burning, and that is what provided the heat to weaken the steel sufficiently for the collapse.

The North Tower collapsed in less than 15 seconds which is about as close as you can get when air resistance is taken into account.

Oh, for pete's sake.

Please Google ballistic coefficient, read thoroughly, and get back to us. Hint: high ballistic coefficient can be achieved by either high density or low drag. I think you're going to find that the many, many tons of the top N stories of the WTC are going to be relatively unbothered by drag at speeds of 100 fps.

Brylin: To me, the Provost's decision is definitely "fair game." The engineering department's job is to teach engineering students not bail the university out of a problem, argue with lunatics, or somehow satisfy your need to embarrass them.

In all seriousness, Ann, why not call for UW engineering profs and materials science profs (especially metallurgists) to address some of these issues? It seems to me that this is the essence of belonging to a broader university community, which with its resources, and at its best, ought to be uniquely equipped to handle debates of this type.

Now, I know this isn't easy, in that engineers frequently don't like to get into debates over issues of science that have already been imbued with politics. (I know this because I'm married to an engineer--who, by the way, spent 10 years working closely with metallurgists etc. as part of his job designing process control systems and programs for specialty steel plants--who is the son of an engineer. Their eye-rolling this past week over this story has been telling, though their discussions of the technicalities have been way too abstruse to be illuminating for lib-arts major me). But as part of the UW commmunity, its seems to be that engineering, materials science and etc. faculty really ought to be willing to step up to the plate. Has anyone asked them to?

It's hard to see how Barrett could have done worse on H&C, but he is a worthy spokesman for this ludicrous cause.

What I think is most interesting is how this will play out locally. Doyle is in a very tight race for Governor and has been trying to distance himself from this loon...but the UW decision that this guy stay on the payroll, at taxpayer's expense, right up to (and beyond) election day means that Barrett is a political issue that is not going away. It is also bound to hurt the incumbent and could prove to be the nail in Doyle's coffin. Since the chances are nil that Barrett will be re-hired for winter/spring 2007 (even the UW isn't that dense), his ultimate legacy could returning the warmongering GOP to the WI governor's mansion. Karl Rove really outdid himself this time.

thanks for the repsonse. A good firend of mine is the Dean of the Business College at UTSA in San Anotonio. He also served as acting Provost for a time. I asked while he was acting Provost, if he intended to apply for the position. He recoiled in horror and told me that in his opinion it was the worst job ever created. He expounded but I forget his exact points.

Mu emphathy or not is irrelevant. There is no excuse for the Provost not using common sense here and firing the weirdo. Academoc freedom is a canard and you know as well as I do that he would not tolerate a White Supremacist dedicating 20 minutes of class to those views. Give him a street corner in Madison and let him bark away at the moon in full 1st amewndment glory.

Uh, the towers collapsed, because the structure was compromised at the time of collapse -- otherwise they would not have collapsed, because the structure would not have been compromised to cause the collapse, which could only have happened if the structure were compromised, or else the structure...would...not...have...collapsed...

All materials change properties as temperature changes. Temperature is simply a measurement of the speed of the atoms (to radically, but accurately simplify) that make up the substance in question. The slower the movement, the lower the temperature (again, sort of metaphorically/simplistically,but accurately); think speed, friction, resistance, etc. When movement stops completely, the temperature is absolute zero (Kelvin; -459 Fahrenheit), beyond which it cannot get any colder. Here's a good quick summary: http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/temperature.html

As they cool, movement slows, and materials condense (i.e.become denser) and at a certain point become solid. However, AC, the door swings both ways,("Spengler's Law," as proposed by Dr. Egon Spengler*). Contrawise, as movement increases, materials heat, and become less dense. While materials still retain the characters of a solid, they can significantly weaken at higher temperatures. For example, heat up a plastic fork or a wax candle and bend it.

The point--the extremely obvious, very, very simple point--is that as the fires increased in intensity and duration, the beams weakened. Duration is also critically important since even if temperature does not increase, the longer the fires burn, the hotter they make the materials around them.

The "pancake phenomenon" is another excruciatingly obvious phenomenon. Not only does the first falling floor immediately greatly increase the weight that the horizontal beams below it were carrying, it also brings mass/energy into the equation as gravity is literally pulling the falling (why it falling in the first place, of course) floor down.

Finally, there is the structure of a skyscraper, which is literally a steel cage with stuff stuck all over it. The cage structure exponentially increases the weight-bearing strength of the beams far beyond what their total would be individually. When a floor collapses, the structure as a whole is weakened, further aggravating the "pancake effect."

Another example would be to note that the difficulty is not in the evidence, but in the enormous heat that you (and Barrett, et al) generate by expending so much of your mental capacity in keeping knowledge out that you seem to have weakened your ability to think.

I can’t get over how inappropriate the subject matter is, without even touching on its accuracy. Either(a) he is wrong, and the material is inappropriate for the class, being false.or(b) He is right, and Islamic extremists had nothing to do with bringing down the WTC, meaning that the bulk of his WTC material is irrelevant to Islamic studies.

The “you need to discuss this to understand the context of Islam in the west today…” is a big red herring – you don’t need to examine in detail a tenuously related conspiracy theory to have a healthy debate on the current administration’s rational or irrational fear of Islamists.

I have little sympathy for the dean, having heard somewhat similar horror stories from high school teacher union reps who let a principle or superintendent know the union supported firing a screwup, only to have the administrator turn around and publicly blame “the union” for why the teacher would not be fired - because they really just didn’t have the guts to tell a difficult personality to their face that they were a screwup and no longer had a job. That may not be what is happening here, but the nonsense about “ideas”, “speech” and “winnowing” seemed quite unconvincing.

I know Prof. Althouse has repeated the freedom of speech/first amendment thing a couple of times, but where does a professor have any “first amendment” rights in the classroom? I always thought that they had a general “academic freedom”, which was a similar but much narrower right. Conversely, I am far more uncomfortable with this discussion about “better hiring” decisions. Yes, this guy appears to be a nutcase, but what about the candidate with impeccable credentials who happens to have an astrology hobby on the side that is never brought into the classroom? Because I think astrology is fruitcake-nutty and this candidate might someday sneak an astrology reference into a class, should I say “no way” in hiring, even though it has never been an issue before? What about Intelligent Design? Or “Bush is a good president?” Going down that road appears to me to be, in the bigger picture, a far more dangerous “free speech” problem than firing one nutty lecturer, or at least forcing him to keep to an approved syllabus.

If explosives were used, material would have been projected up, out, and down. Some of the meterial ejected would have had an greater initial velocity than the building itself which would give the appearance that the building was falling faster than freefall spped. You cannot use visual evidence of some of the material to make a judgement about the speed of descent of the buildings.

The 9/11 commission report states that the South Tower fell in TEN SECONDS. As I demonstrated, freefall is 9.2 seconds in vacuum. How is that not freefall speed?

Based on the lunacy from Shill King and CA, I'd like to start my own conspiracy theory:

The US is not, in fact, an independent nation, but still colonies under British control. The whole "revolutionary war" thing is garbage and a story so that the British can keep us oppressed. Here are my facts:

1. The British maintained forts in the US for many years beyond the supposed signing of the peace treaty. Now what nation would have ever allowed this? I think that the frontier simply had to undergo economic transformation from relying on the money spent by British soldiers.2. Britain was this supposed "enemy," yet we chose to fight on their side during both World Wars. How convenient.3. Ever see George Washington and George III together in the same room? I thought not. That's because they were actually the SAME PERSON!!!!!4. The fact that North Carolina and Rhode Island did not participate in the first presidential election was due to their protest of having to stay silent. Prove me wrong on this one...I dare you!!!(I used three exclaimation marks here, so you can tell I know what I'm talking about)5. Benedict Arnold won great victories for the colonies, but none for the British?!?! Come on, he couldn't have been that incompetent.6. Why are the flags of both countries red, white, and blue?7. Why did the British not help the "Confederacy?" Because the "civil war" was all about enriching the British arms' manufacturers.

I dare anyone to refute this. We must revolt against this awful conspiracy and secret!!!!!!!!

I can't tell you how many times I've implored tenured physics professor colleagues to address this. It's just kryptonite. Everyone knows that once they start in on it, they will never get a moment's rest from it for the rest of their lives.

I have one physics comment: momentum transfer. It's ignored in the "free-fall" analyses and rather changes the conclusions.

If that is not enough of an explanation for you, then you don't know enough physics to judge whether Jones is right.

Brylin: LOL! No. (And definitely not against my alma mater's department.) My point is that having anyone dignify this twaddle with a response only furthers its cause. Every time someone challenges them, they get more publicity. All the evidence in the world will not change these people's minds - they will never be satisfied.

Look at this thread. Look at the response to sincere, intelligent, well-documented comments. There is NO POINT. And that is the point. There are times to just let the moonbats rage until they get bored, clean up the mess they leave behind, and carry on with life as if it never happened. Because it might as well not have.

If someone wanted to start a war, why would they have also needed to blow up the World Trade Center? Wouldn't crashing one plane into it have been enough? Would anybody have said "they just crashed a plane into it, now . . . if it had fallen down that would have been different, but since they just crashed a plane that's not enough?

Did we really need something on the magnitude of this to justify a war with the Taliban. If we had gone to war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban without this, would you say that war had been unjustified?

If this was a plot, couldn't we have crashed a plane into the WTC, and then left it at that? Was there someone behind closed doors thinking: if we crash a plane into the WTC that will get people angry, but that's not enough - we need to blow up the Pentagon also.

The people who said they got calls from their family members saying there planes were hijacked by terrorists and that these relatives ended up dying - are those guys in on the plot?

Ted Olsen, the Bush Admin official whose wife was killed on 9/11, was he in on the plot?

It's been fun guys, but I'm outta here. Believe me, I hold no ill will toward anyone here. I'm simply interested in rigorously debating the facts and problems with the official account of 9/11. If I haven't at least given you pause that there are serious questions that still need to be answered, then I can't do anything else. There are some here who simply will never accept the premise that the U.S. government was at least complicit in the 9/11 attacks no matter how much physical and eyewitness evidence is presented to them. Hopefully, I've at least presented a few facts here that will encourage someone to investigate the truth about 9/11 for themselves.

> If this was a plot, couldn't we have crashed a plane into the WTC, and then left it at that?

If Bush wanted to dredge up reasons for a war, the Cole and embassy bombings would have been more than enough justification. But if he DID require manufactured attacks, he could have reopened the Flight 800 investigation, and "revealed" that yes it was an Al Qaeda attack.

I guess a billon people around the world were in on this conspiracy, since we all watched that second plane hit the WTC on live television.

I guess Bush just threw in the planes for dramatic effect. Saying "terrorists used explosives to demolish the WTC" wouldn't play as well in Jesusland. I guess.

Mike: I wouldn't take my comment as meaning that the information couldn't be presented in a way that could be understood. I was privy, by virtue of proximity, to conversations between two engineers who were not, in context, making an effort to "translate."

Note that I said engineers often don't like to do the latter; I didn't say they couldn't. And these two engineers are not also professors, which makes them different animals, as far as inclination.

Of course, there are exceptions. I just shot off an e-mail to a retired structural engineer (he spent 40-odd years designing materials, parts etc. for, to put it very generically, rockets, which makes him an actual rocket scientist) friend of mine, who loves trying to do such "translations." Since I happen to be in the same state as he, I'm thinking it's time to take him to lunch!

Not everyone, SC. A lot of us are too busy arguing with each other to bother with those folks!

Brylin:Yes, I agree that was the net result of his decision. I was hoping he'd avail himself of an escape clause in the contract, such as the ones Ben posted around here somewhere. I continue to believe that the big losers here are the students, with the university right behind them. Bartlett has what he want: publicity and the ability to put "University of Wisconsin" on his resume and publications. That is sad.

In case anyone wants a pencil-and-paper analysis of the drag vs. gravitational force, let's take the top 10 stories of the north tower as a jumping-off point. Let's say that the pancake theory is accurate: that the top ten or so stories simply fell into the lower portion of the building, and that cascaded collapse of the lower stories. Let's just examine that top ten stories:

Mass: 45,000 tons (approx).Linear dimensions: 64m on a side. Height dimension we can disregard for the present. We're going to treat it like a flat plate 64m on a side.Terminal velocity of an airless drop to the ground: approximately 100 meters/second.

Now, let's calculate the size of the drag force at that speed, as compared with the force of gravity:

Drag force = 0.5*rho*v^2*Cd*S

Drag force = 0.5*1.225kg/m^3*1e4m^2/s^2*1.0*64^2m^2

Drag force is then about 25 meganewtons. Force of gravity is 45,000 tons or 440 meganewtons. In other words, the force of gravity is more than seventeen times larger at the moment of ground impact than the force of drag. The other way to look at that is that it accomplishes the same thing as decreasing the pull of gravity by 5 percent.

5. per. cent. If you assume a completely flat (2-dimensional) plate, you might bump that up to ten percent. Even at ten percent, though, you're talking about less than a second's worth of difference in time to hit the gound.

So, unless you've carefully calculated all of the other forces that could have acted on the building, and established that there definitely is something amiss, you might want to consider the notion that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Plus, I don't think you send engineers etc. into Barrett's class. I just think it would be good if they put their thoughts and knowledge out there, in some forum, as a counterweight to Barrett's (OR as a support, if that's the case). Once pointed to the information, people can choose to avail themselves of it, or believe it, or not.

aw, come on - I posted before your 'I'm leaving' notice; I'll still get answers to those, right?

I've got to cut it off at some point!

Stephen, I'm not interested in speculation. All of your questions involve me getting into the head of someone to see how they think. An impossibility. I'm an engineer by trade, so I'm interested in physical evidence that is grounded in science. Actually, my degree is in aerospace engineering, so I know a little about how an airplane is designed. They are 90% aluminum and plastic. The impact of an airplane against the structural members of those buildings would have been insignificant (like shooting an empty Coke can at a bunch of interconnected rebar). The impacts of those planes did minimal damage to them.

So to answer your questions, I won't answer them. There is no way to know the answers. The physical evidence, however, completely supports my position. Physical evidence trumps eyewitness evidence or speculation every time.

reader_iam: I teach a scientific discipline in graduate school (at the UW). A student's ability to judge a scientific argument is very much a function of their background. The more I think about it, the more I think it's a bad idea (and I started out as a proponent of this approach).

As for the forum idea, that would still be an open invitation to a lifetime of hounding by conspiracy buffs, so how about a link to the work already done by experts, like the 9/11 commission and Popular Mechanics. Anyone genuinely interested in the actual subject would be more than satisfied by this. As I've said before, the rest will never be satisfied by anything.

I still think it's a matter of UW engineers etc. taking a stand or stand(s) on a flap touching upon their own disciplines. And it would help the larger reputation of UW, which is rightly get whacked by this.

The 9/11 commission report states that the South Tower fell in TEN SECONDS. As I demonstrated, freefall is 9.2 seconds in vacuum. How is that not freefall speed?

Two mistakes:

1. The 9-11 Commission apparently used seismic records to estimate the time it took for the South Tower to fall. By watching video of the collapse it is apparent that this is too short; my estimate is 15 to 20 seconds. Of course, if you want to accept the conclusions of the 9-11 Commission on other things....

2. The buildings did not collapse from the tops, they collapsed starting at the point where the planes hit.

CA--you might want to think about using a series of differential equations to deal with the problem--you had the floors above collapsing, each floor adding additional weight thereby changing the mass. You also have to accound for the deteriorating modulus of elatiscity of the structural members over time. This is a complex system that can't be solved with only one equation.

And I just noticed the point about the "insignificant" coke can aluminimum and plastic airplane. An empirical question sir: the weigh of the plane, plus 60 thousands pounds or so of JP$ plus passengers--and the appropriate variable is not mass by Kinetic energy of the plane, one half the mass times the velocity squared--That is considerable energy; hardly a coke can against rebar.

The other half of the "there ought to be drag" argument, though is this:

If the buildings were brought down with HE charges, how come they didn't take longer to fall? If you think drag ought to make a difference in the pancake scenario, it ought to also make a difference in the HE scenario. A building felled by demolition is still going to experience drag in falling. Really, if you think the building fell too quickly you MUST accept the theory that an invisible giant stepped on it.

What we're seeing here is the opposite of the sort of thinking that Barrett maintains he's encouraging.

...a full coke can at 400 or so mph, by the way, four times faster than a major-league pitcher throws a baseball--a baseball which could kill you if it hit you in the temple, even if your head had somehow fantastically not been pre-wired with dynamite.

The only planes I designed were in school. I am not a practicing aerospace engineer. I'm now in another field.

CA--you might want to think about using a series of differential equations to deal with the problem--you had the floors above collapsing, each floor adding additional weight thereby changing the mass. You also have to accound for the deteriorating modulus of elatiscity of the structural members over time. This is a complex system that can't be solved with only one equation.

The vast majority of damage done to the twin towers were from the tons of jp6 jet fuel burning. Which thereby significantly, and fatally, weakened the structural steel.

True, but inevitably when I point out the utter idiocy of stating that those fires brought down the towers, someone pipes up to say "but they were hit by airplanes, too!" I thought I'd nip that one before it got started.

Barrett truly did rock Hannity in that video clip. I completely disagree with him and I don't think he is competent to teach, but Barrett masterfully played both Colmes and Hannity to his advantage.

First off, the caption under Barrett refers to him as a 'professor', so I think Colmes's mistake can be attributed to lazy Fox researchers. This is the issue's first national exposure, and it's on a TV show that serves to rile up viewers so it's understandable that Fox would give him the wrong title. So right off the bat Barrett scores his first point by pulling a title he could never attain otherwise.

Barrett scores again when Colmes asks him if he'll teach in a 'fair and balanced' manner, to which he enthusiastically confirms and repeats 'fair and balanced'. A conspiracy theorist thrives on legitimacy and Fox did their part by feeding him their copywrighted slogan.

When Hannity steps up, Barrett immediately takes control and manages to not come off as the nut he is. While all of his 'facts' and 'evidence' are easily refuted, Hannity can't do much other than call him crazy and crack jokes. Hannity accuses him of holding students 'captive' to which Barrett objects and then Hannity pulls back, defeated. Then Barrett brings in his favorable internet poll results, which were obviously attained by harnessing the power of his paranoid sidekicks feverishly clicking and cache-clearing, to which Hannity again has no reply. Barrett repeats 'research' and 'evidence' and never mentions his overarching explanation that the US is an authoritarian regime that wishes for World War III and aspires to dominate the globe.

The only planes I designed were in school. I am not a practicing aerospace engineer. I'm now in another field.

Gee, I wonder why? Is anyone else here as shocked as I am?

{Ed said:}The vast majority of damage done to the twin towers were from the tons of jp6 jet fuel burning. Which thereby significantly, and fatally, weakened the structural steel.{closequote}

True, but inevitably when I point out the utter idiocy of stating that those fires brought down the towers, someone pipes up to say "but they were hit by airplanes, too!" I thought I'd nip that one before it got started.

So you're agreeing that jet fuel caused most of the damage, and thus was most responsible for the collapse? So what was the point of using "thermate"?

I also think your basis for using ten seconds, 9.2 seconds, or any other specific number for falltime without sourcing that assertion is flawed. In any event, I think I've shown that the building wouldn't be slowed by drag. The drag issue is one that I've seen being spewed out by everyone and their lunatic baby brother, without anything at all in the way of analytical support.

"So, unless you've carefully calculated all of the other forces that could have acted on the building, and established that there definitely is something amiss, you might want to consider the notion that you have no idea what you're talking about."

This statement deserves repeating. Funny and to the point (Well, it made at least me laugh).

Sippican's right,I don't know enough to argue each point put forth by CA or the lecturer. And I trust people who do know that this theory is pure crack for conspiracy buffs. It's mad as a hatter, barmy, unhinged, half-baked putresence.

And now UW Madison has had one of its "professors" interviewed on national news expounding on a theory that makes the UW look like they vetted this guy and therefore agree or at least find it merely "unconventional".

Events like this will hurt UW for a long time, I fear. Not in an obvious and dramatic way, of course, but in a slow, painful way, like erosion, or cancer.

LOL, Korla. Had no idear that Ward Churchill was such a great artist. Well, actually, I did--he's an artist of shamelessness. If I'd been stripped as naked as he has, on every single one of my lies, I'd hafta go hide out in the rain forest. That bird just keeps galumphing around hanging his dumbass everywhere, blaming all his troubles on Da Man.

The problem is that the speech being protected by UW isn't FREE at all. The parents of these college students are paying out big bucks to have this nonsense taught to their progeny who have been raised on a diet of self-esteem, not one of critical thinking!

Ergo, Barrett should NOT have retained his position, he SHOULD be dismissed, and he SHOULD be locked away for his own protection. The man is a babbling lunatic and not worth the time of intelligent and serious people.